


As Well As Any Man

by nimueailinen



Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Historical, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-19
Updated: 2013-05-19
Packaged: 2017-12-12 08:50:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 806
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/809668
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nimueailinen/pseuds/nimueailinen
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In September of 1777, Éponine Thénardier goes to war.</p>
            </blockquote>





	As Well As Any Man

In September of 1777, Éponine Thénardier goes to war.

* * *

 

She enlists in January, steals a suit of clothes from one of her father’s lackeys, binds her chest and cuts her hair and walks two towns over just to be sure nobody will recognize her, because the army is a better option than home, because bullets and bayonets are nothing compared to her father – they can only kill you, after all – and she does it almost on a whim, just to see if she can, half-convinced she won’t get away with it right up until she  _does_. She looks like a boy of sixteen, for all she’s nearly twenty-one, but she says she’s eighteen in a voice that doesn’t shake and if the man who takes her name (her brother’s name, but he’s not using it anymore, and she doesn’t think he’d mind) thinks she’s a liar he keeps it to himself, just shows her where to sign, and just like that, Éponine is gone. Just like that, she becomes Gavroche Thénardier, of the First New Jersey Regiment, Continental Line. 

After her life at home, the army is easy. Éponine knows how to take orders, and she’s stronger than she looks, so she marches and drills and learns how to shoot, how to fight, how to kill a man when he isn’t drunk in a dark alley but strong and well-armed and able to fight back; she pulls her own weight and has a good eye, and if she keeps to herself most of the time, well, that’s alright. Everyone knows the Continental Army takes any man who can hold a rifle, and a few quiet types in the ranks never hurt anyone.

* * *

 

In August, her captain asks her to show one of the new recruits around, on the basis, she thinks, that they both sound French.

Marius Pontmercy, it transpires, is descended of some type of aristocrat, joined the army to honor his father, and has a sweetheart in Philadelphia, who he plans to marry just as soon as they win the war. Éponine doesn’t ask what he’s doing in a New Jersey regiment with a sweetheart in Philadelphia, doesn’t ask what he’s doing on this side of the Atlantic with a French surname and an accent stronger than her own, doesn’t ask him anything at all. He’s awkward and kind and has no idea that she’s a girl. He could be a perfect distraction, if she let him

(She doesn’t let him.

This is no place to be mooning over a boy.) 

* * *

 

They march into Delaware at the end of the month, only to fall back into Pennsylvania after their light infantry loses a skirmish to Hessian mercenaries. The rumor among the troops is that they’re retreating to Philadelphia, but it’s only a rumour – they stop miles south of the city, take positions on the high ground overlooking a river (Marius thinks it’s the Brandywine), and wait for the British to come. 

Two days later, the British army comes out of nowhere, thousands of men slamming into their flank with no warning, and suddenly everything is chaos. Éponine’s world dissolves into a whirlwind of adrenaline and terror and the instinctive, repetitive motions of combat: fire and reload, fire and reload, fire and reload. 

She doesn’t notice the bullet until her legs give out and she stumbles backwards, finds herself lying in the grass with a dull pain in her side and a warm wetness spreading out across her stomach.  _Gut wound_ , she thinks, all she ever learned of death coming back to her in a rush.  _Gut wounds are fatal._  

This is how she’ll die, then, on a foggy battlefield far from home, fighting for an ideal she’s never known. She’d thought it would be scary, dying – everyone else seemed to fight it so fiercely – but she isn’t afraid at all. It’s funny, she thinks. Around her, men are falling, dying, screaming for God or their mothers or anyone else who might save them, comfort them, make them less afraid, but Éponine looks up at the sky and feels nothing but triumph.

Girls like her don’t get happy endings, is the thing; she’s always known she’d die young, made her peace with it long ago, and she’d laugh now if she had the strength, because she won, she  _won_ , she may be dying but she’s dying because of a choice  _she_  made, dying for freedom and the country that could have been hers, not her father’s petty tyranny, and she was never going to die on her own terms but this, at least, feels like something close to it. 

Éponine dies looking at the sky with a smile on her face, and the last thing she sees before everything goes black is the sun breaking out from behind the clouds, bathing the world in light.

**Author's Note:**

> The Continental Army lost the Battle of Brandywine when 15,000 British troops unexpectedly attacked their right flank, forcing them to retreat before their forces could be annihilated. Total American casualties are unknown, but are estimated to be around 1,300 men, 300 of whom were killed. 
> 
> 15 days later, the British marched into Philadelphia. They would hold it until June of 1778.
> 
> There are records of several women disguising themselves as men to enlist in the Continental Army from as early as 1777.
> 
> (The title is from a quote attributed to Mary Hagidorn, who, the story goes, informed an American captain that she would not hide in a cellar with the other women, because she could use a spear and defend the fort "as well as any man", and thus helped guard the fort until the British were repulsed. It's almost certainly a myth, but it's a nice one.)


End file.
